Medieval France
(fl. 1330s). A Dominican friar from Poligny in the Jura Mountains, Renaut wrote the Livre de Mellibee et Prudence in 1336 or 1337. Renaut’s Mellibee, in French prose, is a loose translation of the Liber de consolationis et consilii by Albertano of Brescia (1246). Albertano’s book was translated also into Italian, German, and Dutch. Of the four versions in French, the earliest, from the second half of the 13th century, was a close translation of the Latin prose; two others, one in prose and one in verse, are of unknown authorship and date. The fourth version, by Renaut de Louens, was the most popular, surviving in at least twenty-six manuscripts, and was Chaucer’s source for the Tale of Melibee. Renaut de Louens also produced a verse translation of Boethius’s De consolatione Philosophiae during the same period (1336–37) that he wrote the Mellibee. He undertook both of these books of consolation for an unnamed lady’s benefit and instruction.
The Livre de Mellibee et Prudence is a moral allegory. The house of Melibeus is attacked while he is away; his wife, Prudence, is beaten and his daughter, Sophie, is wounded.
Melibeus calls for revenge and plans to make war on his enemies, but Prudence convinces him to control his anger, maintaining that war is terrible and useless and that reconciliation and peace are altogether more desirable. Arguing from biblical and philosophical authorities, she succeeds in counseling him to pardon his enemies.
Rita Copeland
[See also: TRANSLATION]
Renaut de Louens. Le livre de Mellibee et Prudence, ed. J.Burke Severs. In Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ed. W.F.Bryan and Germaine Dempster. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941, pp. 560–614.
Roques, Mario. “Traductions françaises des traités moraux d’Albertano de Brescia: Le livre de Melibee et de Prudence par Renaut de Louhans.” In Histoire littéraire de la France. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1936, Vol. 37, pp. 488–506.
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